Dean Westphal Focuses on Combating the Sophomore Slump
This year, sophomore Swatties who keep up with their campus mail and emails have been receiving many invitations to sophomore-specific events, from a collection with President Chopp to an event where students visited their previous rooms. These events all sprang from Class of 2012 Dean Myrt Westphal’s new goal to reach out and help the sophomores of this year.
After coming back from a recent conference entitled “Strategies for Sophomore Success,” Westphal was inspired to focus on helping the sophomores adjust to post-freshman year at Swarthmore and avoid the sophomore slump.
Since there are no actual statistics on the prevalence of the “slump” at Swarthmore, Westphal draws most of her evidence of the sophomore year slump from anecdotal evidence and feedback from students.
“I think that sophomore year is a year that gets neglected … sophomores need to make a lot of important decisions and I’m here to help them think through those choices,” Westphal said.
With these goals, Westphal has designed a series of events that include fun activities that invoke a “spirit of camaraderie” and serious informational events. Past events include a Career Services Open House event for sophomores, a lecture on “Financial IQ,” SAM study breaks for sophomores, and others previously mentioned.
As for the success of these events, Westphal suggests that one way to measure these events’ success is to see how many people come to these events. She estimates that Career Services received 35 new contacts at its Open House, 40 students attended the Financial IQ lecture, and around 70 or 80 students attended the Sophomore Collection with President Chopp.
Westphal has also communicated with faculty about the sophomore slump phenomenon. She explained, ”Diane Anderson [the Acting Associate Dean for Academic Affairs] and I wrote a letter about the sophomore experience to the faculty so they are aware of what’s going on and what role they can play.” Overall, the responses from faculty were positive, with one professor mentioning that she wished her child in college had this type of support system.
Because there is no history of events targeted specifically at the sophomore slump at Swarthmore, Westphal needs to design everything from scratch. Other challenges include finding funding and picking good dates for typically busy Swatties.
Upcoming events on sophomores’ calendars include an Open House at the Off-Campus Study Office on October 22nd and a dinner on October 27th. Of course, Westphal is always trying to organize more activities and events for sophomores, such as publicizing a 4–5 page sophomore study guide, helping students when the sophomore paper comes along, and possibly instituting a student sophomore council.
While it is difficult to measure the full success of these sorts of events and special attention, Westphal said, “I feel happy and proud of what has gone on and I’m glad that I’ve really made the effort. And it doesn’t have to reach out to the entire sophomore class. As long as I touched a couple dozen sophomores, that’s good enough for me.”
Westphal remains open for any type of feedback on past events and possible ideas for future events. She can be reached at mwestph1@swarthmore.edu.
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#1: 10/9/2009 at 2:39 p.m.
We've been talking in Professor Schwartz's thinking, judgment, and decision making class about how sophomore slump is usually just regression towards the mean. That is, oftentimes pure luck is one of the reasons that those students who have better than average grades, emotional health, social life, or what have you as first-years do better than the rest of us. There is no reason to assume that these students will be similarly lucky as sophomores. So, we would expect those students who do better than average their first year to do worse than they did their first year during their second year. The bright side is that students who did below average their first year will likely do better their sophomore year than they did their first year.
Now, this is not necessarily to say that the new programs for sophomores are misguided. Even if the sophomore slump is simply a statistical aberration, if these new programs help sophomores, then they are worthwhile for that reason alone. However, you can't fight regression towards the mean, so if that's the cause of the sophomore slump, we shouldn't justify the new policies by saying that they are designed to fight sophomore slump.
There is still the possibility that sophomore slump is more than just regression towards the mean: check out the Wikipedia article on the topic for some other possible causes. But in the absence of real evidence for an alternate explanation (and the article reports that Myrt is drawing her evidence purely from anecdote, which does not go against the regression towards the mean hypothesis), I'd say that regression towards the mean is the most convincing hypothesis.
— Ben Rachbach '11 | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#2: 10/9/2009 at 10:11 p.m.
Have your say.
— Michael Roswell | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#3: 10/9/2009 at 10:18 p.m.
I have always understood Sophomore Slump as an emotional change rather than a performance change per se. The symptoms are less enthusiasm and drive, less allowable lag time before things get good. The causes, I've always understood, involve newness wearing off, getting to know people's and friend's darker sides, actually being better at working with the system, and a more realistic vision of how time moves. The Wikipedia article refers largely to sophomore slump in performance. I am concerned about emotional health, around which I challenge the notion of an inevitable mean as well as the thesis that the only "cause" for change is looking at half the data set while ignoring equal and opposite changes around it.
— Michael Roswell | Unregistered, Swarthmore
#4: 10/10/2009 at 3:42 a.m.
I'd say no hypothesis can hope to explain a phenomenon that, without any real data, we know pretty much nothing about (not direction, magnitude, or even domains under which it does or doesn't apply). Regression towards the mean seems to me to be a much more obvious hypothesis in the types of cases where someone is singled out specifically because they are reaching a peak in their careers or what have you, and then don't live up to expectations, because when they're at peak levels they have nowhere to go but down toward the mean. If, for example, you put the best students on an honor roll and many of those kids don't stay on the honor roll next year, it's much more likely that they're just regressing than that the act of going on the honor roll made them psyched out/more likely to slack off, etc. I do agree that the administration is acting on the basis of a phenomenon that may or may not even exist.
That said, nothing wrong with new events. It just seems weird when there are all these new things but they're all for sophomores...you're making the other class deans look bad!
— Peter '11 | Unregistered, Non-Swarthmore
#5: 10/12/2009 at 12:14 p.m.
And I would actually argue that seniors need some special attention. I'm freaking the hell out about my future far more than I ever freaked out about *anything* as a sophomore.
— Urooj Khan | Unregistered, Non-Swarthmore
#6: 10/19/2009 at 1:36 a.m.
Seniors already have a support group called Career Services.
— Travis | Unregistered, Swarthmore